ISLAMABAD: The leadership of the Islamabad Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IWCCI) has formally thanked the Capital Development Authority (CDA), Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad (MCI), the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), and JazzCash for their role in establishing Islamabad’s first dedicated marketplace for women entrepreneurs, saying the initiative has opened a long-overdue commercial door for women across Islamabad، Rawalpindi and other nearby cities.
Samina Fazil, Founder President of IWCCI, said the Women Enterprise Market in G-11 would not have become a reality without the institutional commitment shown by Chairman CDA Lt. (Retd) Sohail Ashraf and Dr. Anam Fatima, Director MCI, which allocated dedicated commercial space at a time when women entrepreneurs in the twin cities had no formal marketplace of their own.
She said the support extended by these bodies reflected a meaningful shift in how public institutions were beginning to engage with women’s economic participation.
Naima Ansari, former Vice President of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI), said the G-11 market gave women a concrete platform to move from informal vending and home-based work into structured, visible commercial activity. She said institutions such as SBP and JazzCash had reinforced the initiative by embedding financial inclusion directly into the market’s design through its fully cashless operating model.
Both leaders noted that the backdrop against which this market was launched made institutional backing all the more significant. With only 1 percent of Pakistani women currently engaged in entrepreneurship against 21 percent of men, and just 3.2 percent of SME loans reaching women-led firms the market represented a rare convergence of government will and private sector participation in favour of women’s economic rights.
Samina Fazil said IWCCI would continue to engage with public institutions to expand similar initiatives, calling on chambers of commerce and municipal bodies across Punjab to consider replicating the G-11 model. Ansari said the twin cities now had an opportunity to demonstrate that women-led businesses, given the right infrastructure, could grow into sustainable enterprises and contribute meaningfully to the formal economy.
